Naples Community Group meeting Monday

February 5, 2012

By Theresa Wardle First, (in case you only read my opening line), I thought I’d remind you of our upcoming Naples Community Group meeting at 6 p.m. Monday, February 6, in the Naples Fire Station Community Room. Please feel free to stop by and check us out if you haven’t already. Second, I wanted to thank everyone who helped and our supported our many activities in 2011. What a wonderful first year for our Naples Community Group! We met and brainstormed, planned, took chances, volunteered, worked together, made new friends, learned from experiences and basically had a great time following our mission statement: To promote the Naples community by encouraging social, educational and economic activities. We also officially became an unincorporated non-profit organization and opened a bank account. It is exciting to think of all the possibilities in the future in relation to supporting our families, our elementary school and our local businesses. After our very busy fall and holiday schedule, it was nice to step back and take a deep breath. However, with spring around the corner, we are starting to make plans and have begun outlining some activities for 2012. In our January meeting, we proposed the following activities: 2nd Annual Easter Egg Hunt for elementary age students - spring 2nd Annual Community Yard Sale/Community Potluck (possibly combined) – early summer 2nd Annual Naples Italian Festival – fall 3rd Annual Naples Holiday Festival – winter Next Monday, we hope to discuss these activities in greater detail and possibly begin outlining some dates. We’d love to hear your ideas if you are available (okay, that’s my last pitch for the upcoming meeting).We are also looking for people that may be interested in serving as officers for the upcoming year. Of course, our Naples Community Food Cupboard continues to provide meals to individuals and families in need every Thurs. from 2pm to 4pm, thanks to the help of our wonderful volunteers and donations from generous folks. In our Jan. meeting, Shirley Anderson graciously agreed to officially lead the Food Cupboard. We continue to develop this program and are looking for your thoughts/suggestions on how we may best serve people and on ways we may increase our donations. A few folks have made some significant dollar donations (thank you), but food items are going fast and we need help with generating more resources. Please feel free to respond to this e-mail with any thoughts/suggestions. Our Naples Magnet Elementary School is doing great! Hopefully, y’all have heard about or even had a chance to stop by and witness the benefits of their weekly magnet classes on Wednesday afternoons, as well as some of the all school activities such as the recent workshops led by Missoula Children’s Theater’s actors. Sounds like the school staff are also developing ideas for future group activities. One of the goals of the Magnet Program is to continue to increase enrollment at Naples School to lessen the likelihood of being closed in the future. Please help spread the word about our wonderful rural school and all it has to offer. Finally, if you haven’t already, please take a look at some of the photos from our 2nd Annual Naples Holiday Festival last December on our website www.thenaplescommunity.com. We are still looking for someone who has the talent and time to help develop our website. That’s it for now (… this would have been a great time to remind you of Monday’s meeting, but I promised I was done pitching it). Please feel free to contact me and thanks for reading our news! Theresa Wardle (208) 290-1233